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“This,” I said to Erica, “is a fine time to find that out.”

“Well, Jack,” she shot back, fire in her eyes, “there’s not a lot I can do about the timing.”

“Sounds like there’s not much you can do about anything,” I returned.

“Yeah, Jack, like you’re a real master of the desert.”

“At least I can swim.”

“You’re not going to have to,” John interrupted. He had stepped into the edge of the water, and he beckoned for us to follow. “It’s wide here, but not very deep, probably not even up past your waist.”

Erica strutted past me to the water.

“Come on,” John said. “That dude will be here in no time.”

John was already a quarter of the way across, hurrying as best he could. Erica followed him closely, slightly more downriver than he was. I plunged in after them. The current was surprisingly strong. It pushed me downstream behind Erica.

It seemed to take forever to get across. John and I kept sneaking glances back over our shoulders. The poacher was coming cautiously through the brush, afraid of being tricked or ambushed. The timing was going to be close.

Then Erica was gone. I glanced back at the riverbank behind us and when I looked forward she was gone. Nothing but water between me and John.

“Shit!” I shouted. “John!”

He noticed right away what the problem was. “Erica!” he yelled.

The surface of the water broke between us. Erica’s head popped into the air briefly, her eyes wild with terror. I noticed, and hated myself for it, that with her wet hair all in her face she was beautiful.

She coughed and gasped and was gone again. Sank like a stone.

I scrambled, wading toward her, splashing the water trying to paddle myself faster. John dove in where he was.

It seemed like they were down there forever. John’s hat floated lazily in his ringed wake. As I splashed closer, I wondered if she’d gotten stuck. I wondered if seaweed grew in desert streams. I even wondered how I might help when I got there. “Not deep at all,” I muttered. “Probably not even up past your waist.”

Then, with a rush, John was swimming on the surface, dragging Erica behind him.

Just then I slipped into the same hole Erica had. I found it surprising, and surprisingly cold. Strangely, under the surface of the cold water, I realized that John hadn’t stepped into this hole. Only Erica and I had. We hadn’t been following him exactly.

But at least I could swim.

I got twisted around coming back to the surface and emerged facing the riverbank we’d just left.

The poacher was there. He was smiling.

I plunged back under the surface as he squeezed the trigger. Even under the water I felt the shock as the bullet hit the water, spraying a trail of bubbles down past my face.

Many things focus the mind, among them homicidal poachers hunting you down like some kind of big game. With clarion consciousness I swam underwater to the place where I remembered the wash meeting the river. I didn’t hear another gunshot. I wondered if he could track me below the surface.

He could.

As my head came up, the cannon boomed again. The bullet thwacked the water and ricocheted off the bluff next to my head.

Erica was already scrambling up the wash. John climbed ahead of her. I pulled myself out of the water. The narrow passage was at best a couple feet deep, but it angled into the face of the bluff. By squeezing into it, we could be out of the poacher’s sights. So press I did, tightly up against Erica’s legs.

“Jack, stop it!” she said.

“Get going!” I said urgently.

She stepped on my shoulder and my head and climbed higher.

Bushes clung to the sides of the wash, creosote bushes or mesquite bushes or some kind. They made great handholds, as long as you didn’t mind the thorns. I didn’t mind.

I also didn’t mind the constant pelting as John and Erica knocked loose rocks onto my head and shoulders. I ignored the pain because the truck had stopped again. The riverside poacher was moving downriver to where he could get us in his sights again.

As we climbed higher, the rocks took longer and longer to splash into the water.

John reached the top of the wash and scrambled over the rim of the bluff to safety. Erica still had eight feet to climb.

“Get going!” I shouted.

“I am going, Jack!”

“Faster!” I’d be in their sights any second.

“I can’t!”

“What is your problem?”

“Thorns, Jack!”

“Ignore them!”

“I can’t.”

“You have to!”

“I can’t!”

“You’re almost there!” I said, trying encouragement.

Then she was close enough. John reached down and grabbed her hand, helping and hauling her up over the edge. Suddenly, it seemed, she was gone.

One duck left.

I found out what Erica had been talking about. At the top, where she had been stuck, everything was thorns. Every species of long-spiked, thorny plant in the wild kingdom had offspring in the last eight feet of that wash. It was like some kind of powerful thorn magnet. Thorns grabbed my shirt, tore at my pants, and stabbed through my shoes into my feet. They were impossible to ignore.

The gunshot, however, focused my mind. For an instant, I wondered how these guys could be poachers with such terrible aim. They needed automatic weapons or rocket-propelled grenades or something. Maybe land mines. Somehow, they missed me again.

The bullet ripped through the mass of thorns on my right, knocking loose a huge chunk of bushes and soil and rocks. As the avalanching mass slid past me, I noticed that it left a bunch of clean handholds in its wake.

But as I reached for a clean, unthorny grip, the sliding tangle of bushes snagged my pant leg. It pulled me off balance. I teetered back on one foot, thorns firmly in my left hand, nothing at all in my right. For a split second I looked down. Below me lay a rocky fall and a watery grave.

“Jack!” It was John, leaning way over the edge, stretching out his hand to help me. “Here!”

That was the odd thing. After the drawing of Erica, after the looks, even after the full confession, he was helping me. More than that, he was putting himself in the line of fire for me. Dangling there, almost falling off the face of the bluff, a thought flashed through my head. Back in Gridlock, Macy had told me that John had caught his wife cheating on him, and he had walked away.

I heard and felt the tearing as the bushes ripped away from my pants. My hand shot up and locked onto John’s. He hauled and I scrambled and just as I cleared the rim, another bullet cracked through the air over our heads.

Erica and I lay panting on the sand. John knelt near the edge, peeking through a clump of bushes.

Several seconds passed. Finally I could talk again. “Thanks, John,” I said.

John said nothing, intently watching the poachers.

“You’re a jerk, Jack,” Erica said.

I had noticed how sexy her voice was, so I said nothing.

A few moments later, we heard the truck moving again.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

John waited before answering. “They’re going back toward our truck,” he said finally.

“What for?” I asked.

John shrugged. “I hope I don’t know.”

“Maybe they’re going to roast hot dogs,” Erica said, aiming the sarcasm at me.

I ignored her.

John stood up and walked away from the rim, surveying the area. Erica and I joined him.

Bluff and river to our west. Northwest, the column of black smoke from Macy’s truck rising and dispersing into the air. To the north and east, the rough hill I’d admired the day before, and beyond it purple mountains that under other circumstances would have been beautiful. To the east, a rugged series of hills and mountains, with the sun still warming up the morning. To the south―

“A million miles to Phoenix,” Erica said, reading my mind again.

“Actually,” John said, “it’s only a little over forty.”

We thought about that. Hills and mountains stretched away as far as we could see to the south. Sheep Bridge was a long way away. Horseshoe Lake was a long way past that, and civilization still farther. We now had no truck, no guns, and no Macy and Sharon. Far to the south, the mountains rose hazy and jagged in the distance. And Phoenix was a long way past them.

“Only…” I repeated.

“Seems like a million,” Erica said.

When we’d left the previous day, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might never return.

Suddenly I noticed that the desert was absolutely quiet. Deathly quiet.